See
Photographs at the end of my article:
Lost and Found - Kings
Point Cemetery
I was very interested in reading the
article concerning the Woodward Tragedy
when I first accessed Denis Graham's Web Site in
June’ 98. I was born and went to school in
the very neighborhood where this terrible
accident took place, and never heard of the
accident and was unaware of Kings Point cemetery.
My wife and I were determined to locate the
Woodward Family gravesites and document our
discoveries for our family and friends.
Our first stop in July was a visit to
the Chattanooga Public Library. I found a listing
of the people buried at Kings Point and
directions to the cemetery documented in 1941. I
obtained a copy of the entire front page of the
newspaper that reported this accident from the
Tennessee Archives Library located in Nashville,
TN. Also, We found information that confirmed the
closing of the cemetery in 1938. With this
information in our hands, my wife and I followed
the directions and found that the general
location of the cemetery was surrounded by
government property, which was densely covered in
woods. We knew that it would be very dangerous to
try to find the graveyard in July because of the
heavy population of snakes, poison ivy, sink
holes, etc.
My wife made many calls to TVA
(Tennessee Valley Authority) to obtain permission
and topographical maps of the area where we
suspected the cemetery to be located. Most of the
people we contacted had never heard of Kings
Point Cemetery. Finally! A TVA represenitive
called us and sent us a topographical map that
was created in 1945, identifying the location of
the cemetery and providing procedural
instructions of obtaining permission to go on the
government land.
We had done our homework and were ready
to go!
We waited until the week of
Thanksgiving to start our adventure of finding
the location of these gravesites. We thought the
cooler weather might reduce the chances of us
finding a snake (at least that is what I told my
wife) and the leaves fallen from the trees would
provide better visibility. We knew we would need
to hike approximately one mile in rough terrain.
Therefore, we dressed appropriately for our
adventure not knowing exactly what we would find.
We parked our car by a very rough access road,
doubled checked our camera, took another look at
each other and the rough terrain and decided to
do it now!
The small rough road became a very
small trail. The small trail became a forest. We
marched into that forest following our knowledge
of the maps that we had accidentally left in
Nashville. As we traveled up a steep hill that we
thought was the location of the cemetery, I saw a
shadow of something that looked like a tombstone.
To our excitement, we found it!
It was hard for me to believe that over
two hundred people were buried in the cemetery,
which covered the hillside. Only a handful of
tombstones could be seen in the rough terrain. My
wife and I developed a plan to start searching
for our family’s graves. I went one
direction and she went another. I found some
civil war graves that had been robbed. It made me
sick to think that someone would do a thing like
that. I was beginning to get discouraged as I
move vines away from the few stones and not
finding the Woodward gravesites. I heard my wife
call my name. I very quickly went in the
directions of her voice. She had found the
gravesite of E.E Woodward (not a member of the
tragedy). I have not been able to determine if he
is one of our ancestors or not. If you have a
record of this Woodward, Please let me know. We
continued our search.
My wife started shouting my name. She
had found the gravesites! I was searching for
gravesites over the crest of the hill and could
not hear her voice. I had the camera and it was
getting late. Finally, I heard her excitement. I
could not believe it. There were all of the
Woodward Family’s tombstones in a row.
Several of the tombstones were broken but in good
shape in comparison to the others that we had
located in the graveyard. We immediately started
taking photographs after clearing some vines and
documenting information located on the stones
(see pictures). We paused for a moment of
reverence and left the gravesites as we had found
them reflecting the honor we were given to
accomplish our task.
Mary and Jack D. Woodward
